[Note: I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway .]He was among the men who thought they could change the world until they realized that the world changed on its own, and dizzyingly, but in the opposite direction toward which they’d worked, and even in unexpected and strange directions, at which point, neither innocently nor cynically, they started working for what was worth saving, even if that attitude sometimes made them seem antiquated or even conservative—at least compared to those that, while they unscrupulously cut the biggest slice of cheese for themselves, insisted on self-identifying as modern.How odd to have finally finished within hours of each other two 500-page books in which an upper middle-class man who has nothing to do with the government (and is portrayed primarily amidst his coterie) is meant to stand in for a devastatingly disastrous leader of the country. In Chin P’ing Mei the man was Hsi-men Ch’ing representing the Emperor Wan-li; here it is the literary lion Mario Brando, who is gradually revealed to have been as evil as Pinochet, in his own arena.But be assured that this is no rigid allegory. It is a subtle and beautiful novel that only gradually reveals this aspect of itself. At the same time it is an exploration of the power, minutiae and mutability of language, memory and perception.The novel follows two interwoven groups of Argentinians over a week: two generations: older writers who experienced Pinochet as young adults, and those who are now in their twenties but were shaped by those years as well. The older ones were caught up in the Precisionist literary movement, which was controlled by the now-dead autocrat Brando. Among the younger ones is the main character, Nula, whose activist father was killed in an unexplained shooting many years ago. Several characters are ‘missing’, the literal or figurative victims of Pinochet or Brando. A few fled the city or the country and are returning or are voices from afar.These are definitely not simple or ‘good’ people. They are complex and changeable. Saer’s technique is to build his novel in pass after pass through his characters’ memories. Gradually little pieces come together, refute or replace each other, add depth, evoke questions. This evolution happens in both his characters’ own minds and in the reader’s sense of the book. They are sexual, sophisticated, widely read, and politically astute, but they are human so they hurt and they soothe. They bear wounds but they carry on.At first I was a bit asea and frustrated by the very dense text that sometimes focuses on the most quotidian tasks for pages on end. But about 150 pages in, I flipped back to look for a quote and began to perceive the unifying images and themes that Saer has beautifully woven into his work. Water is everywhere, but particularly in the river and its delta that the characters criss-cross daily and into which they stare and reflect. Again and again Saer describes the surface of the river, both its visual impenetrability and its actual permeability. Contrasted with its delta soup is the clear swimming pool of the expatriot who has returned to … no one is quite sure why he has returned. He has an enigmatic serenity that tugs at them, and the clarity of the water in his pool echoes his peace.Saer also pays repeated attention to the slums of city and countryside, and to the consumerism of the hypermarket and the Western world. Weather is ever-present, as intense sunlight or storm. Wine serves as Nula’s livelihood (since his philosphy avocation won’t pay the bills) and lubricates every event. People think a lot in cars and buses. Real life, and yet somehow fragile, it is examined so closely.I grew to care very much for these people over the course of the novel, even if I was irritated by their imperfections at times. Saer is masterful in portraying their individual ways of coping with the echoes of Pinochet, and yet one concludes that they have found a way to conquer that past, whether through laughter or surrender. This is one of those books that would repay a second read in order to notice and enjoy in more detail the complexity of language (e.g. mid-sentence tense changes) and the way that Saer weaves the layers of so many individual memories into a work of art. While there were a few places where the weight of unnecessary details severely tested my willpower, the farther I read the more I understood what he was up to and was all in for the ride. Early in the book a character recalls a memory that describes Saer’s method beautifully:he and Tomatis were leaning over the railings of the suspension bridge, watching the water, and it occurred to Barco to ask, Carlitos, in your opinion, what is a novel? And without hesitating even for a second or looking up from the water swirling around the pillars of the bridge several meters below, Carlitos had answered, The decomposition of continuous movement.Kudos to Three Percent and translator Steve Dolph, who brings the work to English elegantly.
What do You think about La Grande (2014)?
"With the rain, came the fall, and with the fall, the time of the wine." My favorite sentence in the book, and not just because it is the last. It's actually interesting to me. Not so the rest of the book. While the author does have some lyrical sentences, reading this book was not "like dancing inside the mind of someone who see everything through the looking glass, always the skeptic," for me. For me it was like dancing with someone who has two left feet. (translator's note)PS My numerous updates will clue you into how I REALLY feel about this book. The cover shouldn't be blue...it should be gray.
—Nancy
